wolfriverjoe

On the verge of taking Bakhmut? Again? Still? They've been 'about to take Bakhmut since last August. By 'overwhelming force'? Right. Human wave attacks, using 'mobniks' to draw fire to identify where Ukrainians are. Not so good for the mobniks, who have died by the thousands. For what? A smallish city with no real strategic or logistical value? Or is it just that Putler needs to win something, ANYTHING to not reveal how stupid he is? If the Russians do capture Bakhmut, there are at least 2 or 3 lines of defense just to the west. On an overall upslope, so the Ukrainians 'have the high ground'. 8 months plus to not quite take Bakhmut. At that rate of advance, they should take Kyiv sometime in... 2050 or so. Of course, the west is slowly providing advanced weapons to Ukraine. The Challenger & Leopard tanks have started to arrive. Abrams should be arriving reasonably soon. OTOH, Russia is pulling T-54s out of storage. Yes, tanks designed almost SEVENTY YEARS AGO. And if you think that Ukraine & Russia should 'negotiate a peace agreement', how about starting with the Budapest Memorandum. You know, the one RUSSIA signed a while back. Maybe if Russia showed any inclination to actually adhere to agreements they signed, then the idea that they'd negotiate in good faith might have some validity. As it is, everyone knows that any 'negotiations' with Putler are simply giving him a propaganda victory and some time to try to rebuild the hollow shell that was once the Russian/Soviet army. Last - Apparently May 9 "Victory" parades are being cancelled all over Russia. Even in Moscow. Maybe Putler remembers Anwar Sadat.

Yup. You can tell a LOT about a society, or segments of one, by how they treat minorities and marginalized people. Do they show compassion and care for someone who is struggling with being 'different'? Or do they gang up on them, bully and ostracize them, threatening violence? Dan Rather has an interesting piece on the current behavior of the 'anti' crowd: https://steady.substack.com/p/stop-it?r=du1sl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwAR38Pw0BvJa2V-EAPzpqqaljf0immHCa2GM0aPwboFgYaErs1cudcPf6nm8 From it:

The 'sockpuppet' claim is regarding people who create extra profiles. Either to post their opinion, pretending to be 'other people' in order to make it look more popular and relevant than it is, to post stuff without admitting that's how they really feel or to get around a ban. I think the record for 'number of sockpuppets' is held by John Rich. He got permabanned and came back as about a zillion sockpuppets. They kept getting banned, he kept making more and coming back. I don't think any of the current 'naughty poster' people are true sockpuppets. Trolls, sure. I'd bet a considerable amount that a 'certain poster' is a paid troll, posting propaganda for a hostile government. There have been a few in the past I'd be comfortable making that accusation with.

No, some of them are flat out trolls.

Ya know? One of the REALLY cool things about this site is that when stuff like this arises, it's not all that uncommon for someone like, oh, the President of USPA to chime in on a discussion. Or maybe Bill Booth. Or, in this case, Kelly Farrington. You know, the "Velocity Fella". Post #6 had an accurate, technical description of what would have to happen for the proposed scenario to emerge. This last one says "Short answer, not gonna happen unless you really screw up". Along with "we've seen what some idiots are capable of doing, and we deliberately engineered this to avoid that." Love it.

Interesting opinion piece on Thomas. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/clarence-thomass-close-personal-friends?r=2pinw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR1dlkLKxKRHwPmNLR_z0rBcxW2KkHs_snJy_l7a-MT9ml6Je1wekFDLAyw

You can DuraCoat right over it.

Yeah, based on what he posted about truck sales & waiting lists, neither is basic supply & demand economics.

Didn't know them by that name, but had a pretty good guess. A quick search confirmed my guess was correct. And found her, too. Sheesh. The only place with a more over the top caricature of racists is Blazing Saddles.

You know that the current FBI director, who would be overseeing any sort of investigation into Biden, was appointed by Trump, right?

Hi Jerry, Fun fact. Both of them were reinstated by their respective local jurisdictions (Nashville Metro Council & Shelby County Commission). Both votes were unanimous. In the case of Shelby County, it was because none of the Republican members showed up. Bunch of fucking cowards.

So would a trans person be able to legally shoot this guy on a 'stand your ground' defense? Ohhhh. Right. That's only for conservatives. If a liberal shoots someone in self defense, they often die during the arrest process.

Just out of curiosity, how many of these shootings would 'universal background checks' prevent? How many of the weapons were purchased through the existing system that included a background check? As I've said before, I have no idea how to stop these shootings. But one thing I REALLY don't want to see is some sort of draconian gun control legislation passed that: A - does nothing to stop the shootings B - motivates the gun owners to vote out the Ds and install the Rs (like happened in 96).

Please define "loony and extremist left". Please give some parallels to MTG, Boebert, Gaetz, Lake and the rest. How many sexual predators have the "left" condoned and excused. Cuomo resigned as governor of NY after credible accusations. Al Franken resigned as Senator from MN after a picture came to light. The false equivalence of 'the Ds do it too' is disgusting. Fun fact: When Paul Pelosi was attacked, the Rs came up with some incredibly stupid and hateful fantasies about what had happened (I won't call them 'theories' because they have no basis in ANY actual facts). When Ted Cruz's daughter attempted suicide because the right won't accept her for who she is, the response from the Ds was... Support. Not hate. Besides, the 'left' in the US wouldn't even be 'moderate' just about anywhere else in the world. The Ds would actually be right of some of the 'conservative' parties.

Right. Again, not for amateurs. But at least mostly practical on a large-scale industrial basis. With a bit more digging, I found that extracting sodium from Sodium Hydroxide is probably more practical and economic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castner_process Ummmm... Aren't they actually rising?

Not super hard, but not for the amateur. Electrolysis, the same process to get Hydrogen from water. For the amount of hydrogen needed to power the stuff the 'hydrogen economy' talks about, it's not going to work well. For the much smaller amount of sodium, even for millions of batteries, it would work, at least on an industrial scale.

They will bitch about how hard it is to get sodium. I mean, it's not like there are any large sources of sodium just sitting around. It's not like 'the oceans are FULL of it'. (and again, we really need a sarcasm font)

Fortas resigned in disgrace. I doubt Thomas will resign. He might get prosecuted for failing to report gifts. Possibly tax evasion. I highly doubt he would be removed by impeachment. I highly doubt the R controlled house would impeach him.

Absolutely. It's a VERY clear case of improperly accepting gifts. It's a VERY clear conflict of interest (even though Crow's & Thomas' 'interests' don't actually conflict). Similar to the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where the conservative candidate accepted a large 'campaign contribution' from someone with a case before him, it doesn't really matter that he likely would have ruled the same way with or without the bribe. It's the accepting a large 'contribution' from someone with a case before him. And, of course, he didn't see a problem with it.

Well, to be fair to Thomas, I somewhat doubt that the 'favors' altered any of his decisons. He would have ruled the same way either with or without the bribery. And yes, a 'sarcasm' font would be helpful.

Al Jaffee has died at 102. He was the cartoonist who created Mad Magazine's "Fold In" back cover. And a lot of other stuff in Mad. RIP Al, thanks for ALL the laughs. And there were a LOT of them. https://apnews.com/article/al-jafee-mad-magazine-cartoonist-dies-f676fbeb190b44c8aa4abcb0daa5d571

Well, the answer is 42. What that answer actually means is entirely dependent on the question. However, understanding both the question and the answer at the same time is impossible. I have in my pocket, a device that allows me to contact the majority of the people on the planet and to access almost the entire knowledge of mankind... I use it primarily to argue with strangers and look at cute pictures of cats. (Note: This is not my quote. But it sure fits)

Betcha he doesn't get lost very often. That's a handy thing when on vacation.

There were a lot of things that were being said. That was one of them. Another was that the Sheriff & Koresh were friends, and the sheriff could have easily brought him in if the ATF had asked. Yet another was the claim that the ATF basically shot first and asked questions later. The building was bulldozed almost immediately after the fire, any of the evidence (including the front door that was full of bullet holes) was destroyed. There were a LOT of aspects of the whole case that raised questions. None of those questions were ever adequately answered, AFAIK. The congressional hearings that were supposed to answer those questions were sidetracked from the start by the accusations of child molestation. While those were credible accusations, they only showed up AFTER THE EVENT. The story for why the ATF went in changed a bunch of times during the siege. From 'illegal machine guns' (they found a lot of guns, but only a couple that were illegal) to 'manufacturing meth' (that one quickly 'disappeared'). Keep in mind that Koresh was never charged, tried or convicted of any crimes.

And, of course, gullible fools believed what he said.